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Friday, 22 July 2011

Good riddance to Blue Labour

Oh dear. It seems Blue Labour is fragmenting. The motley crew of Labour right-wingers has fallen apart because leading light Maurice Glasman went that bit too far.

Blue Labour has largely been a vanity project for Glasman, but he still needed a number of like-minded thinkers (if 'thinkers' is the word) to make it work. His extreme anti-immigrant comments to the Tory press have, however, alienated allies like Jon Cruddas - who, whatever his faults, is still anti-racist.

A vital part of Blue Labour's appeal was its orientation on the right-wing press. Just think about the name: hardly a great idea if you want to win supporters inside the Labour Party, but provocative, catchy and distinctive enough to get commentators and editors salivating. After the hacking scandal, it is no longer quite so sexy to have a direct line to influential media insiders.

So the timing of Glasman's nasty little attack on immigration was far from ideal. Not only were his prejudices unpalatable to a number of fellow Blue Labourites, but it was hardly the moment for using a right-wing rag to convey your ideas.

Glasman's whole routine is founded on shameless populism, propagating the foul idea that Labour must pander to prejudices supposedly synonymous with working class people to be electable. Flag, faith and family - but definitely no foreigners - is the core of the project. This - rather than fighting cuts, defending the NHS or redressing inequality - is apparently how working class votes can be won.

The hacking scandal has already weakened the Blairites on the hard right of the Labour Party (it is they who have previously been most shameless in their sycophancy to Murdoch). This latest episode suggests incoherence and disarray in these same circles.

If Ed Miliband has an ounce of sense he will create considerable distance between himself and Glasman, instead of vainly scampering after the latest novelty 'fresh way of thinking', however superficial, confused or obnoxious it may be.

10 comments:

The interview with Glasman was with Mary Riddell for "Fabian Review", which hasn't come out yet. Riddell works for the Telegraph, and so it was trailed there. The Express put the story on its front page the next day. So, Glasman's interview with Riddell was not in the context of pandering to the Tory press - the audience was members of the Fabian Society. Glasman has apologised for his comments.

Why does this matter? Because it's not the case that Glasman is running to the Tory press - though some of his comments have been picked up selectively on occasion by the Mail and the Express - he and Blue Labour do not match the usual definition of "right-wingers", "hard right", "Blairites", etc.

Glasman's political influence stems from him being associated with London Citizens. So much so that David Miliband used a large donation from Lord Sainsbury to fund free community organising training for Labour Party members as part of his leadership campaign, and Ed Miliband adopted the living wage idea from London Citizens.

"Glasman's political influence stems from him being associated with London Citizens. So much so that David Miliband used a large donation from Lord Sainsbury to fund free community organising training for Labour Party members as part of his leadership campaign, and Ed Miliband adopted the living wage idea from London Citizens. "

Quite. The core of this issue is that most of Blue Labour aren't "Labour right-wingers" as you oddly put it. We're Labour left-wingers, and in terms of workable and popular ideas, there's not a whole let else on the table. The left in the party will live to regret choosing to do down Blue Labour rather than engage with it.

Thanks for the clarification about the origins of Glasman's immigrant-bashing, James. However, someone as media-savvy as him will have certainly known his comments would first appear in the Telegraph if the interview was with Riddell (indeed the paper will only have been able to report them, prior to publication in Fabian Review, with his permission). He will also have known it would be manna from heaven for the Express.

Blue Labour has been geared towards the media. There are groupings within (or associated with) the Labour Party which have far more members or supporters than BL, but only a fraction of the media attention. The assumption was that getting media access (especially the right-wing press) was the best way of influencing Labour policy. That tells you something about the relationship between Labour leaders and the press, how in thrall the former has been to the latter.

Is Blue Labour right-wing? The clue's in the name. The premise is that Labour should adopt elements of traditional Tory ideology to become more popular, especially with working class voters who have supposedly become disillusioned with Labour because it isn't 'tough' enough on immigration, crime and benefits claimants. This is a right-wing agenda.

Except that Blue (badly chosen, nobody disagreed) was chosen in the sense of melancholy, and blue-collar, and as a challenge to the Tories stealing Labour ideas with Red Tory, not as a proposal that we should move to the right.

The premise is that Labour should adopt elements of traditional Tory ideology to become more popular

Or we can ask Glasman, if - and your writing suggests so - he is sole arbiter of what is and isn't Blue Labour. What did he say? In everything I have ever written or done I have criticised the domination of capital and argued for the democratic renewal of the Labour movement to resist its power. That is all I stand for really. Resistance to commodification through democratic organisation. That's the position. Labour as a radical tradition that pursues the common good. That is Blue Labour, and the rest is commentary.

Yep, that 'traditional Tory ideology' of democratic organisation to resist capital. I remember it well...

In everything I've read about Blue Labour that's the first I've heard about the 'Blue' part being a nod to the phrase 'blue collar'. Anyway, the whole basis of the project (as I've said) is to appeal through pandering to reactionary prejudices. There is nothing new, brave or progressive about marrying left-of-centre economic policy (or at least rhetoric) to right-wing values, social conservatism and reactionary prejudice. Its an approach that was taken to an extreme by Mussolini and Mosley - both of whom came from left-wing backgrounds - in the 20s and 30s.

Glasman's recent comments aren't an aberration. They reflect - in an exaggerated way - the core philosophy of Blue Labour: renewing Labour electorally requires making a reactionary populist appeal to the 'white working class' in the name of 'tradition'.

I'm just not clear why you feel you have the ability or right to declare what the 'whole basis of the project' is, when the opposite is stated by people who are, y'know, part of the project.

I'd identify the core flaw in this as description of love of family, freedom from crime, loyalty to democratic state, and so on, as 'right-wing values'. They're ones shared by most left-wing people, they've just been lost sight of by a lot of left-wing activists in the last half-century or so.

"We're left wingers," claims Old Politics, rather implausibly. It would be interesting to hear Old Politics' definition of left wing! But 'left wing' is internationally understood to be associated with the colour red. If Old Politics is keen on being seen as 'left wing' it might make sense to join LRC, but, regardless of WHERE Glasman's speech was made no amount of rhetoric can disguise its racist & 'right wing' agenda.

As for OP’s “why you feel you have the ability or right to declare what the 'whole basis of the project' is”… Well, OP, firstly it’s Alex's opinion; and secondly, it’s pretty self-evident.

Okay. Here's why Glasman called it "Blue Labour". He's influenced by Karl Polanyi. For Polanyi, commodification involves a "double movement" - commodities enter a marketplace and can be priced, but the need of capital for continued commodification impinges on the products and processes of existing cultures. So there is resistance to this commodification and its effects - to conserve living standards.

So, the Luddites are remembered wrongly as rejecting progress - a stubborn conservatism. But the followers of the mythical Ned Ludd broke machinery because they did not own it or control its use - it was used to deprive their income by making them redundant. The productivity gains of mechanisation go to capital.

1. Blue Labour is about the politics of paradox. Paradoxes are ambiguities of meaning. They allow differences to find a synthesis and a new term rather than just contradicting one another.

They offer politics the possibility of transformational alliances rather than just the soldering together of two positions or picking and mixing policies. We're after neither new nor blue but a synthesis of the two rooted in Labour traditions which will be more than the sum of its two parts.

Whether or not the 2015 election is fought on a static pick and mix of 'new' and 'blue' policies or a genuinely dynamic and evolving synthesis is open to question. We might have to wait longer